Investing in coins and notes can be a money-spinning business only if you have a discerning eye and patience. Collecting and trading valuable mainland and Hong Kong coins has been a major activity in Chinese communities over the years due to strong market demand.
'Hong Kong has many really rare Chinese coins because they were brought to Hong Kong from the mainland during the 1950s. And the city's vibrant, open market means people can buy and sell numismatic collectables with few restrictions,' says Michael Chou, chief executive of Champion Hong Kong Auction, a company with operations in Hong Kong and the mainland specialising in online auctions for big-ticket collectables including precious coins.
Chou says investing in coins and banknotes yields a higher profit than other collectable items such as paintings and antiquities. 'Coins can be easily kept in bank vaults and, when the economy gets stronger, the value of the coins and notes goes up accordingly.'
Coins are generally in stronger demand than banknotes because there are more coin collectors and investors, according to Chou, whose company focuses mainly on Asian coins, particularly those from the Ming dynasty and those produced by the mainland in the 1950s and 1960s.
'Coins have a larger market than that of banknotes because people have collected them for thousands of years,' he says. 'Banknotes have less variety and fewer collectors.
'Chinese coins have wider diversity and come from different provinces and in different denominations. A lot of Chinese coins that were used in the latter period of the Ching dynasty were made in Britain and Germany with a lot of rare patterns. The most expensive Chinese coins were made with patterns outside of China,' Chou says.